Ben Unglesbee at Higher Ed Dive recently wrote about the coming budget cuts to the University of California System and the Cal State University System. Something that EdSource, a California-based media outlet, has been reporting on for months.
Those devastating cuts, amounting to $650 million, are part of a long and important history of US higher education and austerity, beginning with Ronald Reagan when he was Governor of California. Those ideas, at least in part, continued under other administrations, as they reduced higher education for working-class citizens, especially African Americans, while giving greater opportunities to foreigners, including elite noncitizens.
These policies and other regressive actions drove millions of folks out of California.
For now, the UC System can absorb these funding losses, but the Cal State System and the people who are served by that system, the working class, will not be as resilient. On a small scale, this is another symptom of the decline of US democracy and the slow decline of the American Empire, something few folks in higher education will admit, or even discuss.
Related links:
University of California Academic Workers Strike For Economic Justice
State Universities and the College Meltdown
